How to Write Preschool Lesson Plans (With Examples)

A preschool lesson plan is the written plan for what a group of children will do and learn across a day or a week — and what you will watch for while they do it.

It records the learning goals you are working toward, the activities and materials that serve those goals, the changes you are making to the environment, and the observations you want to come out of the week with.

It is a working document, not a script.

You write it so a co-teacher can pick it up mid-week, a substitute can run the room when you are out, and your director can see what the week is aimed at.

What actually happens still follows the children: a plan that cannot bend when a visiting firefighter empties the block center is not a plan you can teach from.

One framework to judge a plan against is developmentally appropriate practice, published as a position statement by NAEYC.

NAEYC's Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) position statement (2020) holds that each child from birth through age 8 has the right to equitable learning opportunities — in a center, a family child care home or a school.

DAP names three core considerations that a good plan quietly answers: commonality in how children develop and learn, the individuality of each child, and the context your program operates in.

Plans schedule interactions along with activities.

Harvard's Center on the Developing Child describes serve and return — responsive, back-and-forth exchanges between a young child and a caring adult — as interactions that play a key role in shaping brain architecture.

Deciding which child you will sit beside at the sensory table, and what you will say back to them, is lesson planning too.

Planning is one part of the job: the preschool teacher career guide covers the role itself — duties, settings, pay and the path in — while this page stays on the planning work.

Formats differ: a published curriculum hands you its own template, and a director may ask for a house format.

Underneath the formatting, working plans carry the same parts.

• Learning goals. What children will practice, written as something the child does. If your program uses an observational assessment, borrow its wording — Teaching Strategies GOLD rates observations of children from birth through third grade against research-based objectives, and the company cites 38 of them — so a goal such as "pours, scoops and compares volumes at the sensory table" is written as something an observer can see and score.
• Materials and environment changes. What you are adding, rotating or restocking, and what has to be prepped before the week starts.
• Large-group opening. The circle: a song, a story, or the short demo that shows children what is new in the centers.
• Small-group activity. The teacher-guided part of the day, with the steps written down — small groups are where a new skill gets introduced and where you can watch a few children closely.
• Center add-ons. What changes in dramatic play, blocks, sensory, art and the library so free play carries the week's focus too.
• Outdoor and active play. The plan names it like any other part of the day, so it survives a busy week.
• Adaptations. The stretch for a child ready for more and the step-back for one who needs an easier entry — DAP's individuality consideration, written into the plan instead of improvised.
• A watching-for note. Which children you will observe, on what, and where the note goes. This is the line that connects a lesson plan to assessment.

The social-emotional layer gets planned too, and the Pyramid Model shows the layering.

It is a framework of evidence-based practices for young children's social-emotional development, designed to work alongside a program's curriculum rather than replace it.

Its three tiers — universal supports for all children, targeted social-emotional supports, and individualized intensive interventions — sit on a foundation of an effective workforce.

Read as a planning order: relationships and a high-quality environment first, for all the children; targeted supports named for the children who need them; individualized strategies where a plan already exists.

If your center adopts a published curriculum, the week starts from its guides rather than from a blank page.

The Creative Curriculum for Preschool, described by its publisher Teaching Strategies as a program for 3- and 4-year-olds built on play-based studies, lists among its components a Curriculum Guide, 9 Teaching Guides and 7 Foundation Volumes.

A study gives the week its spine — your planning job becomes the adaptation: what you keep, what you swap, and what you extend for the group in front of you.

If you build the week yourself, the same sequence holds:

1. Pick one focus. Something the children are already doing — the puddles on the playground, the delivery trucks on the block — carries free play better than a theme off a calendar.
2. State the goals. A week needs a short list: what you want children practicing by the end of it, written as child behaviors.
3. Plan the environment first. The Pyramid Model's universal tier — nurturing, responsive relationships and high-quality environments, for all children — is the part every child touches. Decide what changes in each center before you write a single teacher-led activity.
4. Write the grid. Days across the top, parts of the day down the side: circle focus, small group, center add-ons, outdoor.
5. Repeat with variation. Carry the same material across days and raise the challenge each day, rather than planning something brand-new for every day — it keeps the week coherent and your prep list short.
6. Check the materials. Run the books, images and props against the four anti-bias education goals — identity, diversity, justice and activism — before they go on the shelf.
7. Split the work. If you share a room with a co-teacher, split the prep and name who runs which small group. Keep a running note for next week while this week is still fresh.

Programs anchor planning to a framework: the curriculum's adopted objectives, or the early learning goals where a state or program publishes them.

Either way the habit is the same — each planned activity should be traceable to a goal, and each goal should have an activity that gives you something to observe.

Observational assessment tools make that loop concrete.

Teaching Strategies GOLD, an online observational assessment for children from birth through third grade, rates observations against research-based objectives — the company cites 38 — and its checkpoint reports show which children are below, at or above widely held expectations.

The vendor page we read does not give fixed checkpoint dates — programs set their own checkpoint periods — so ask your director how yours run and plan activities that feed them.

California's Desired Results system has its own instrument, the Desired Results Developmental Profile: DRDP (2025) is now fully implemented for programs serving infants through grade 3, administered by the California Department of Social Services and the California Department of Education with WestEd.

If your program uses DRDP, the observations you record during planned activities and free play feed that profile.

Screeners sit upstream of lesson planning.

ASQ-3 is a parent-completed developmental screener for ages 1-66 months covering communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving and personal-social; a parent completes the questionnaire in 10-15 minutes and a professional scores it in 2-3 minutes.

Results that fall near the cutoff land in a monitoring zone for tracking children at risk.

Alongside it, ASQ:SE-2 screens social-emotional skills for ages 1-72 months with 9 questionnaires, designed to be used together with a general developmental screener such as ASQ-3.

None of that is curriculum: a screener flags who needs a closer look, and what happens after a flagged result — including any referral for further evaluation — follows your program's screening policy, not the lesson plan.

The plan's part is the classroom support in the meantime: more practice in the flagged area, built into small groups and centers.

Environment rating scales grade the room rather than the child.

ECERS-3, published in 2015, assesses center-based programs for ages 3-5; ITERS-3 (2017) covers center-based programs for birth through age 2; FCCERS-3 (2019) covers home-based programs birth through age 12; SACERS-U (2014) covers school-age care for ages 5-12.

A detailed plan and a strong environment are not the same thing, but they pull the same direction — the materials-and-environment column of your plan builds the same environment these scales assess.

Observation is the hinge between the halves: what you record during free play becomes the evidence an observational assessment like GOLD rates, and what the assessment shows tells you what next week's plan needs more of.

Here is the shape in practice.

The week below is written for a preschool room of 3- and 4-year-olds — the band Teaching Strategies builds The Creative Curriculum for Preschool for — in a play-based program using a study approach.

Adapt the content; keep the columns.

Day	Circle focus	Small group	Center add-on	Watching for
Monday	Introduce the study: what do we know about seeds?	Sort seeds by size into cups	Sensory table: soil, scoops, cups	Who already uses comparison words
Tuesday	Act out the planting sequence	Plant bean seeds in cups	Dramatic play: garden stand	Whether children retell the steps in order
Wednesday	Which fruit has the smallest seed? Children predict, then check	Seed mosaics on card	Art shelf: collage materials for a glued-seed picture	Pincer grip and glue control
Thursday	Prediction circle: will a seed sink or float?	Water play with pipettes	Water table: pipettes, tubes, boats	Prediction language — "I think… because"
Friday	Walk outside to hunt for seeds	Draw what the bean seed does next	Library: seed and garden books	Which books pull children back, and what they say

One small-group entry from that week, written out the way a plan reads:

• Objective: children sort, compare and describe seeds by size, shape and color.
• Materials: seeds of different sizes and shapes, cups, sorting trays, magnifiers.
• Setup: trays set out at the small-group table before the group sits down.
• Steps: look at each seed with a magnifier; sort by one attribute; sort again by a different attribute; describe the groups out loud.
• Stretch: children ready for more line the seeds up from smallest to largest, or count and compare the groups.
• Step back: a child still learning to sort works on a single attribute with a smaller tray, with a teacher alongside.
• Watching for: which attributes children choose on their own, and who needs words like biggest and smallest modeled.

Formats follow the program.

A center running a published curriculum fills in the format its teaching guides assume; a director who hands out a house template expects plans in that shape; a teacher who owns the format should keep the same parts every week so plans stay comparable across the year.

A reusable template is worth setting up once, so the writing goes faster than the thinking.

Before you print it, run the week through DAP's three core considerations: commonality — is the challenge matched to this age group's development; individuality — which child needs the step-back version of Thursday's small group; context — what your room, your schedule and your outdoor space make possible.

The example is a starting shape, not a script.

How much planning time a preschool teacher gets depends on the program.

Treat it as a question to ask rather than an assumption to make.

Depending on the center, the time may come out of quiet time while a floater covers the room, sit on the schedule as a prep block, fold into staff meetings, or exist as no named slot at all.

Whichever it is, writing plans the job requires is work: under the FLSA, work an employer suffers or permits, even when it was not requested, is work time that must be paid, so planning time is generally paid time.

The arrangement matters less than whether it is real: if detailed plans are the goal, a named slot with coverage that actually covers is what makes them possible.

If you are job hunting, ask the question in the interview: when do teachers plan, and who covers the room while they do?

The answer tells you how a center organizes work you will do every week — and it is a fair thing to weigh alongside pay and schedule before you accept one of the preschool teacher jobs you are considering.

If you are the director, planning time is a staffing and schedule decision you control.

Whatever arrangement you choose, put it on the schedule as paid time so coverage is assigned rather than improvised, and let teachers reuse what works — rotating studies, materials and center add-ons from one year to the next stretches the same planning time further.